ok so since updating i thought connectivity was ok or improved. its actually worse. i have zero service at home now and wifi calling rarely works lol. tried rebooting, clearing cache partition... data off and on... hmm

I have had no issues with connectivity (data or wi-fi) with this update.

I have been enjoying the new update. Phone super fast and great battery. The only thing not working no matter how many times I try is the Bluetooth. It won't even recognize my car, speaker or headset. Anyone know of a fix? I know this is beta still but no being able to use Bluetooth is sad.

I have been enjoying the new update. Phone super fast and great battery. The only thing not working no matter how many times I try is the Bluetooth. It won't even recognize my car, speaker or headset. Anyone know of a fix? I know this is beta still but no being able to use Bluetooth is sad.

I have been able to successfully connect to all four of my various Bluetooth without any issues. In fact, the only issue I seem to be having is periodic sound glitches. So generally the update is working well for me. Note that before I installed, while I was in recovery mode, I did do a factory data reset and a cache partition wipe. If you didn't, you might consider this option.

I have been enjoying the new update. Phone super fast and great battery. The only thing not working no matter how many times I try is the Bluetooth. It won't even recognize my car, speaker or headset. Anyone know of a fix? I know this is beta still but no being able to use Bluetooth is sad.

I have been able to successfully connect to all four of my various Bluetooth without any issues. In fact, the only issue I seem to be having is periodic sound glitches. So generally the update is working well for me. Note that before I installed, while I was in recovery mode, I did do a factory data reset and a cache partition wipe. If you didn't, you might consider this option.

I did factory reset not cache partition wipe. That might be it. I'll give it a try when I get home. I love this phone a lot.

ok so since updating i thought connectivity was ok or improved. its actually worse. i have zero service at home now and wifi calling rarely works lol. tried rebooting, clearing cache partition... data off and on... hmm

I'm still on Nougat and I can't get wifi calling to work anymore. It used to work after playing with the phone and changing settings for about 10 or 15 minutes. But it just will not work anymore. My cell signal at home has also tanked the past few months. I'm on Mint which is an MVNO of T-Mobile. If I put my sim card in other phones I don't have an issue. Only in the A7 does the signal suck. Oreo or Nougat I guess the signal is horrible with this phone.

@ram1220, if you get a chance, next time you are at home, can you post a screen shot of your signal strength (settings->system->about phone->status->SIM Status->Signal Strength) in the A7, and then again in another phone that you are using? It would be helpful to see how many dBm the signal strength is off.

I appreciate the response but I'm not really interested in fixing the issue anymore. I have written the A7 off for the most part. Looking hard for another phone but just not sure which one to get. I was pretty much just responding to Maverick to let him know the poor signal happens on Nougat too. I have always had poor reception with my A7. It's just gotten worse lately. And now wifi calling will not work at all. It used to work after playing with settings, sacrificing chickens, doing the wifi dance, etc for about 15 minutes. Now it just won't work. That's why I have given up and I am looking for a replacement phone. It won't be a ZTE.

ok so since updating i thought connectivity was ok or improved. its actually worse. i have zero service at home now and wifi calling rarely works lol. tried rebooting, clearing cache partition... data off and on... hmm

I'm still on Nougat and I can't get wifi calling to work anymore. It used to work after playing with the phone and changing settings for about 10 or 15 minutes. But it just will not work anymore. My cell signal at home has also tanked the past few months. I'm on Mint which is an MVNO of T-Mobile. If I put my sim card in other phones I don't have an issue. Only in the A7 does the signal suck. Oreo or Nougat I guess the signal is horrible with this phone.

@ram1220, if you get a chance, next time you are at home, can you post a screen shot of your signal strength (settings->system->about phone->status->SIM Status->Signal Strength) in the A7, and then again in another phone that you are using? It would be helpful to see how many dBm the signal strength is off.

I appreciate the response but I'm not really interested in fixing the issue anymore. I have written the A7 off for the most part. Looking hard for another phone but just not sure which one to get. I was pretty much just responding to Maverick to let him know the poor signal happens on Nougat too. I have always had poor reception with my A7. It's just gotten worse lately. And now wifi calling will not work at all. It used to work after playing with settings, sacrificing chickens, doing the wifi dance, etc for about 15 minutes. Now it just won't work. That's why I have given up and I am looking for a replacement phone. It won't be a ZTE.

Read through most of posts here and decided to stick with what I have. Would definitely do an OTA updated, but with the SD card and some issues that have been reported here I am not interested in fixing something that isn't broken.Thanks.

ok so since updating i thought connectivity was ok or improved. its actually worse. i have zero service at home now and wifi calling rarely works lol. tried rebooting, clearing cache partition... data off and on... hmm

@maverick, how strong was your signal at home when you were running nougat?

it was still weak... but now, nothing. 3c says -122 dBm. hard to send and receive texts it seems. most of the tim ei have an empty triangle up there

Read through most of posts here and decided to stick with what I have. Would definitely do an OTA updated, but with the SD card and some issues that have been reported here I am not interested in fixing something that isn't broken.Thanks.

Same here, I prefer to wait for an OTA update (if any). As is (B35), my Axon 7 is working just fine.

I know I gave my final review, but I don't think anybody shared any benchmarks yet so I thought I would after running some PCMark and 3DMark ones. Just a reminder my phone is a original 2 year+ old A7 running the stock+ Android 8.00 Battery has never been replaced and no quick charging. Some of these will be screenshots of my scores and some of them will be just a listing of my scores. Obviously these will not be as good as a 2018 phone with a Qualcomm 845, current Andrino and more Ram, but for a 2 year old phone that probably needs to for a battery and charging port repair/replace but has never been to a repair shop, please reply with your thoughts. These tests will be posted in no order. Thanks.

Read through most of posts here and decided to stick with what I have. Would definitely do an OTA updated, but with the SD card and some issues that have been reported here I am not interested in fixing something that isn't broken.Thanks.

Same here, I prefer to wait for an OTA update (if any). As is (B35), my Axon 7 is working just fine.

I dont think they'll be doing another ota unless you side load this. I thought they said there was an issue with the encryption

Not sure why anyone is afraid to update via SD? That's how I actually prefer to do mine. Either way, this update wipes your phone completely for the install. I've done it twice now with no issues. But, to each his own, everyone has their preferences.

ok so since updating i thought connectivity was ok or improved. its actually worse. i have zero service at home now and wifi calling rarely works lol. tried rebooting, clearing cache partition... data off and on... hmm

@maverick, how strong was your signal at home when you were running nougat?

it was still weak... but now, nothing. 3c says -122 dBm. hard to send and receive texts it seems. most of the tim ei have an empty triangle up there

Not sure what to try @maverick. I agree the A7 has always had weak signal from the get go, but not sure why an update would change anything? But I'm certainly no expert.

Read through most of posts here and decided to stick with what I have. Would definitely do an OTA updated, but with the SD card and some issues that have been reported here I am not interested in fixing something that isn't broken.Thanks.

Same here, I prefer to wait for an OTA update (if any). As is (B35), my Axon 7 is working just fine.

I dont think they'll be doing another ota unless you side load this. I thought they said there was an issue with the encryption

I am not anticipating an OTA; if it comes - fine, if not - that's fine too.

Not sure why anyone is afraid to update via SD? That's how I actually prefer to do mine. Either way, this update wipes your phone completely for the install. I've done it twice now with no issues. But, to each his own, everyone has their preferences.

My phone is working rather smoothly since the update the only problem that I am having is poor battery life which I had on nougat. I can barely get an hour of screen on time with Wi-Fi. I am considering if I should just send the phone back to ZTE and get the battery replaced is a real shame that now this phone has resurrected that it's having even worse battery issues for me than on nougat.

I've had the update for about 2 weeks now, and here's what I've noticed:

-Overall it's smoother and faster seeming, with less scrolling studders and glitches. -Battery life is usually slightly better than Nougat, although occasionally there will be an odd quick-drain that happens for no apparent reason. -The stock phone app sometimes glitches up and has to be force stopped and restarted, as the number pad only displays about 25% of it's numbers. -The Dolby app doesn't remember my preferred on/off settings as it did in Nougat; it used to remember to be off when I plugged in headphones, and on other times. Now it seems clueless.-Random weird stuff: for example my desktop wallpaper came on at a 45° diagonal while more than half the desktop is just black. -(My main beef here...) My 10 band equalizer app is totally non functional, and I haven't found an eq app that works without glitches. Most don't work at all, and a few work sometimes but cut off randomly, or sound great but then later the phone speakers sound tinny and distorted, requiring a reboot. The Dolby app sounds good with headphones but has limited customizable presets as far as I can tell.

Those are the main things I've noticed. I was ready to re-install Nougat because eq is a big deal for me with this great sounding phone (with headphones), but I found one tolerable eq app at least for now. Anyone have any suggestions on an eq app that works well on this phone with Oreo?

Read through most of posts here and decided to stick with what I have. Would definitely do an OTA updated, but with the SD card and some issues that have been reported here I am not interested in fixing something that isn't broken.Thanks.

Same here, I prefer to wait for an OTA update (if any). As is (B35), my Axon 7 is working just fine.

I dont think they'll be doing another ota unless you side load this. I thought they said there was an issue with the encryption

I am not anticipating an OTA; if it comes - fine, if not - that's fine too.

Not sure why anyone is afraid to update via SD? That's how I actually prefer to do mine. Either way, this update wipes your phone completely for the install. I've done it twice now with no issues. But, to each his own, everyone has their preferences.

After a day of use, I can see a couple of bugs, the trusted places won't work more then 20 min before asking for the pin to unlock, and if you put the brightness in auto, you can't adjust the level like in Nougat. About the battery life, with the screen on, it's the same as before (6 hours max, I'm a heavy user), but when it's locked, the battery can last so much more, except when conected with BT to my car and using Spotify, here the battery drain is faster.Other then that, I see a faster response time.

@tomg i remember on nougat the dolby thing would always turn off when plugging earbuds in. it sucked. just had to take an extra step to turn it on and everytime i opened google music or something else it would lag so it mde it a pain

Hello everyone. This is my final thoughts on the 8.0.0 upgrade as I said I would post once I used the new Upgrade for a while after I finished setting everything up. When the A7 came out initially, there were so many reviews that hit the mark, that I feel we didn't need another one. Other than posting regarding specific issues, minus the Android feature ane visual changes, the phone was basically the same. So again, I felt no review was needed. Now that I have sent up my phone and have used it for a while, I can give a final review.

1St as I have posted before my phone is over 2 years old and have had issues do to the phone being 2 years old. Some of it was HW and some was software. With that said let me dive into this review.

The Issues:Obviously for now I will miss my Daydream support, back to Google Cardboard for now LOL. I do have less apps on my phone as a result. Also there is nothing like Hiya installed and no app to speak the caller ID out loud vs. a ringtone. Again not the end of the world.Also some apps/games that I downloaded that didn't work well, were slow, or were crashing are not any more. YEA!. There were like 1 or 2 apps that either did not load or seam slower since the 8.0 upgrade but those are the apps themselves.My phone still does not hold a battery charge as long as it was brand new but it drains allot slower especially at startup with 8.0. In 7.1.1 I would turn my phone on from being 100% charging and when booted my phone would already be at 90% or lower battery percentage. Now I only get to at most 95% when turned on nice. No idea how much is a refresh. Other than the non daydream apps, Hiya etc. I have the same amount of apps running as In did in 7.1. Also the battery seems to last longer than before. In 7.1 I would be at 50% or less fairly quickly. Now it gets to maybe the 70's percentage wise before battery drain slows down.Charging, that is a HW issue I think as the port does seam pushed in. The phone definitely does not fast charge as the phone did brand new, But the phone does charge faster. In 7.1 when my phone was maybe at 40% charge when off charging, my phone now with 8.0 is at 60% charge. Still takes 6-7 hours from 0-100% when off charging but it does seam a couple of hours faster. Charing when the phone is on when 7.1.1 was installed was impossible as my phone would drain vs. charge even when said it was charging. Not the case in 8.0.0. Charges as expected but still slow compared to QC3.Wifi works again. It worked before but it wouldn't stay connected to 1 network very long. Plus if I had multiple Wifi networks listed for a place, the phone would switch between the networks and make me login at least if I have to say ok on a webpage every time. Now my A7 just stays connected.

Now for the Non Issues:The skin/launcher is way more stock than before. I have played with the Kin on Pixel phones and other than a few things, it is almost there. The main 2 differences I have noticed between this and the pixel launcher are the following, No Google dedicated Now screen to the right, No noticeable option to not add new application icons to the desktop when installed, The addition of some gestures like shake for Flashlight etc., MI-POP on screen button option, and since the home,back,and task buttons are not on screen buttons, the ability to switch from left-right is helpful. Other than that, I could be hard to tell a difference. Except for Skin and background options. Oh and you can enable ZTE's lock screen. As far as the default apps, minus ZTE stuff in the settings, other than Calendar and maybe a little in the dialer, the Messages app and the Contacts app seams stock. Now I know they are called something different for download in the play store as Messages is called Messenger etc., in a Google Pixel, Messenger is called Messenger and Contacts looks exactly the same as well to me.

Now this may be the same 8.0.0 build that ZTE was going to publish in April moving from Beta to Final, but it does have a JUly security patch which was not around in April. Plus I know last years Samsung phones, Note 8/S8/S8+ are still on 8.0.0 as well with some having a security patch still from May or June as an example. The LG6 is still on 8.0.0 with a older security patch than ours, and that phone is only 1 year old. I think once ZTE gets to where it was before the ban as far as US support and all that, I think ZTE had a better record than except for Hauwei, Sony, and maybe Motorola as far as fixes/upgrade with a Unlocked phone as far as speed is concerned of these upgrades and updates in my opinion.

Now minus what I already posted again I would say my phone is revived. I like the new version of Dolby Atmos and now access to the Qualcomm Sound Mixer in some apps just adds to it. Speakers sone the same or slightly better than before, and my bluetooth headphones do sound a little better between the 2 mixers. Other than what I am willing to deal with software wise mentioned above, whether it be the battery or the pushed in charging port. If the phone battery QC3 charged like it's brand new, and drained as slow as the phone did when the phone did when it was brand new, then I would be set for now. I live in Atlanta Georgia and use my phone as my daily driver, so I can't really be without it. So I don't want to send it in any where. I am not in a place to do the work on my phone myself. So if anybody knows/recommends a guaranteed place in Atlanta Georgia where I can take my phone in to get the QC3 charging and battery repair, where I could pick the phone up the same day possibly, that would be great. I do like the new charging while off screen. I do wish the clock there was 12 vs. 24 hour but again, nitpick.

Conclusion: Yes the phone is 2+ years old with 2+ year old processor and other HW/Specs., and the phone by design (metal body) as an example is missing some modern conveniences like Wireless Charging as a result, but at the time this phone came out, that stuff like that was in it's infancy as far as development and widespread use. But I am happy with it. Unless something good enough, cheap enough comes out that I would want to buy whether it be another ZTE like a A9/Pro for the USA or another phone with Flagships Specs, or if I unfortunately can't wait, maybe even another phone that is coming out from a 3rd party like ZTE, which I will only do if my phone acts up enough and not worth repairing, I am happy as is. But if I can afford it, I will upgrade when a ZTE comparable replacement is available and make this a backup phone. If you like my assessment, please like, and let me know if you have any questions or comments. Especially if you know of a repair place in Atlanta Georgia. Thanks for reading my final review.

It may have an old fashioned metal body...but it's a body designed by BMW! Thanks for the review.